(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic rhythm performing apparatus for use in or with an electronic musical instrument, and more particularly, to an improvement in the rhythm pattern alteration control system of the above-mentioned apparatus.
(b) Description of the Prior Art
There has been known the technique which, for the purpose of materializing automatic rhythm performance rich in variation, is of the construction that, along with memorized principal rhythm patterns, their diversive variation patterns are stored in a memory, and that desired appropriate variation patterns are selectively read out from this memory.
Also, as another prior art methods of materializing variation-rich automatic rhythm performance, there have been provided an arrangement designed to allow the user to set (amend) a part or section of a whole rhythm pattern for each type of tone generator, i.e. for each type of rhythm instrument (e.g. Japanese Patent Preliminary Publication No. Sho 51-63612), and also an arrangement designed to allow the user to arbitrarily set (compose) desired rhythm patterns (e.g. Japanese Patent Publication No. Sho 58-8515).
According to the above-mentioned prior art method designed to selectively read out one of these stored variation patterns, a large number of different variation rhythm patterns are required to be stored in a memory to obtain many pattern variations, so that there arises the inconvenience that a memory of a large capacity has to be provided.
Also, in the above-mentioned type prior art constructions which are designed to allow the user to arbitrarily set either the whole or a part of rhythm patterns, the arrangement is so designed that the patterns are set by first designating the rhythm timings and then for each timing the tone generators (rhythm instruments) to be used are designated. Therefore, while there can be enjoyed a great freedom in setting desired modified patterns, this is entailed by a complexity in the setting operation, which has made these prior art mechanisms difficult to operate especially by the beginners.